This past week's commentaries
Happy Sunday!
After four days spent at the Moral March and Love Forward rally in North Carolina, I plan to do what Tucker and Mabel are up to here — a whole lotta nothing!
Here is just some of what I covered this past week in case you need to catch up…
In the introduction to his book, "American Nations," (2011) Colin Woodward makes cultural, lifestyle, historical, and values-based observations that support the notion that the United States is not as united as we think and advances the possibility of secession and the creation of several nations where we find the U.S. on a map today, some areas becoming independent states including territory from our borders with Mexico and Canada:
Yankeedom: "Yankees have sought to build a more perfect society here on Earth through social engineering, relatively extensive citizen involvement in the political process, and the aggressive assimilation of foreigners. Settled by stable, educated families, Yankeedom has always had a middle-class ethos and considerable respect for intellectual achievement....(its) underlying drive (is) to improve the world and the set of moral and social values that scholars have sometimes described as 'secular Puritanism.'"
"The Deep South was founded by Barbados slave lords as a West Indies-style slave society....For most of American history, the region has been a bastion of white supremacy, aristocratic privilege, and a version of classical Republicanism modeled in the slave States of the ancient world, where democracy was a privilege of the few and enslavement the natural lot of the many."
"Having forged an uneasy 'Dixie' coalition with Appalachia and Tidewater in the 1870's, the Deep South is locked in an epic battle with Yankeedom and its Left Coast and New Netherlands allies for the future of the federation."
"...since 1976 Americans have been relocating to communities where people share their values and worldview. As a result, the proportion of voters living in counties that give landslide support to one party or another (defined as more than a 20 percent margin of victory) increased from 26.8 percent in 1976 to 48.3 percent in 2004. Immigrant avoided the deep red counties, with only 5 percent living in them in 2004, compared with 21 percent in deep blue counties."
Based on these observations in 2011, the election of a white supremacist ruling by divine right and despising minorities, including all of color, was not at all surprising. Nor was the rise of an aristocracy defined as those Americans in the wealthiest .1 percent of the population.
Unfortunately, awareness of these realities brings with them an awareness of how difficult it will be to resolve the political problems facing our nation.
Thanks for the photo including Tucker and Mabel. Have a great day.